“Ok, so… what do you know about the Craft?”

Raika shakes her head. “Not much. Haven’t read through her books, but all I know is what She Who Stills the Water told us: it’s a way of influencing Qi where you sacrifice something to it?”

Li Shu nods, seven thick, leather-bound books wrapped in human hair in front of her. “That’s… not wrong. From what she wrote, it’s… a bit weirder than that. So, it’s… well, if you wanted to, you could call it a type of cultivation, just like you could call cultivation a style of Craft. It’s about infusing Qi into something to the point that it gains a weight that the world must recognize: traditionally, this means taking Qi into an object or into yourself directly, and shaping those things with your beliefs, formulae, and the type of Qi used. With the Craft, it’s about severing part of yourself, and then filling that thing with Qi to the point it grows into something greater.”

“Ok, following so far,” Raika says, blocking and ducking under a kick and a short burst of Flame. “Just… not clear on how that means the sorts of powers the Witch used. I’ve never heard of a cultivator with a power that could reach that far at her level, and that’s not even going into how she was weaving different effects into each other.”

“Well,” Li Shu admits, flinching back a bit from the ongoing violence in front of her, “I admit that some of that probably had to be skill- but the idea behind it is simple. If you’re making yourself stronger, all at once, you need your whole sense of self to grow at once. There’s a degree of variance, but your cultivation has to affect all of who you are at once, or it doesn’t work right. Like… getting strong arms, but leaving your legs weak.”

Raika and Hao Nera both nod, the latter only barely flinching away from her fist. “Can’t skip leg day,” they say in sync.

“...Right. Well, by removing part of you, separating it entirely from who you are so you can never truly have it again, there’s a lot less complexity to it. A person gets stronger, and it affects muscles, bones, organs, perception, impact strength, speed- but for hair to get stronger, it just needs to affect hair. Not as much Qi for the same level of effect, but it sacrifices making the person controlling it weaker, since the Qi isn’t going to them. Then, since there’s so much “empty space”, conceptually, around the sacrificed piece, you can add more to it. Instead of making a stew, you’re just making a broth, and then you can add all new things later.”

“Got it,” Raika says, grabbing Qen Hou by the back of his head and bodily flinging him into the hillside a good fifty feet away. “So if the usual cultivation is improving the entire self, then the Craft is taking just one part, and adding new things into it that you can control.”

Li Shu shrugs. “Pretty much. Takes a really advanced ritual to start, and it’s a pretty complex process, just like cultivation. I can see why they were so rare. At the same time, there’s a ton of potential in it. Rather than cultivating a Dao of Purple Flame, like Qen Hou has been, you could have a flame in a lantern that can manifest swords, or absorb heat, or burn away light instead of air- but you could never gain any benefit or direct touch from that flame, either. You could freeze to death in a burning house.”

“You know,” Hao Nera pants, absolutely drenched in sweat and dirt and weaving desperately, “it’s- a bit disheartening- hearing you two chat- while I’m trying- not to die!”

Raika laughs, increasing her speed and stepping around him. He jumps away from her last position, looking around wildly, only to smack straight into her and almost fall over.

“No need to exaggerate, Hao Nera,” she says lightly. “I already said I wouldn’t kill you.”

She sweeps his feet with a kick, grabs his ankle as he is violently spun nearly upside down, and uses it to whip him into the ground hard enough to cause a booming sound.

“It’s only training.”

Hao Nera coughs weakly. He raises a trembling hand, and-

“Ah. Still awake? Then let’s keep going.”

She can actually hear how his heart rate and scent patterns shift into panic as she idly tosses him up into the air again. She casually lets go of his ankle, grabs him by the waist, and throws him about half as hard as she can straight at the hole in the hill she dug with Qen Hou’s face a minute ago.

She smiles as she listens to him curse the whole way there.

“Are… are they ok?” asks a smaller voice.

She waves the concern away. “Yeah, kid, they’re fine. I’m holding back plenty, and if they get really hurt, Li Shu here can fix them right up.”

Li Shu fixes a glare on her. “No, I cannot. My skills at healing do not extend to reviving minced meat into full-fledged people.”

Raika shoots her a winning smile. “If you say so, honored healer. But listen, kid, I’m not even using Qi or anything, it’s fine!”

Jin’s eyes are wide as he stares at her. “You did… that. Without Qi? I thought cultivators…”

Li Shu pats his head. “Raika is… special. Her using Qi looks a lot weirder.”

“Yup,” she says with a grin. “What can I say? I’m built different.”

She stands in the center of their “training ring”, a circle of cleared earth about fifty feet across in every direction. Wearing nothing but shorts and chest bindings, she idly stretches as she waits for Qen Hou and Hao Nera to dig themselves out from under the rubble, eliciting a crackling series of pops from in her frame, her blacksteel left arm making a stark contrast to rich brown skin and flowing red braids. Jin’s eyes go pretty damn wide at the movement, though there’s room for debate on whether its the size of her assets or the distinctly inhuman ways her skin flexes as weird muscle groups beneath it stretch.

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“So,” Raika say, “what do you think? Is it possible I could use it?”

Li Shu has some of the tomes open in front of her, but isn’t really looking at them, mostly fidgeting with suturing thread and a few ointments she’s prepared for the end of the spar. She refocuses up on Raika when she asks the question, but is quick to shrug.

“I’m not sure. We could definitely do the ritual for it. In fact, I’d like to. I think there’s a lot of room for me to grow with this, and I don’t usually have a lot of time to sit and meditate anyways. In theory, since it doesn’t use meridians or a Dantian directly, it might work for you. But it does still use Qi, which you can’t control directly, and involves the soul to some extent.”

Raika sighs. “And I don’t have soul organs.”

“You do still have a soul, otherwise you’d have died or gone catatonic when you first lost them, but there’s no real way to know the state of it. Normally, the soul organs draw in Qi, the soul itself changes that Qi, and that changed Qi infuses the body, bringing the soul and flesh closer together- but for you, we have no idea what your soul looks like now. We can’t look into your Qi for hints as to what its in, if it reflects any Dao, or have you look directly at it. Maybe some of your new organs connect to your soul somehow, but if so, I haven’t the first clue how to interpret anything I sense in them, nevermind the fact that shouldn’t technically be possible, since they’re physical organs.”

Li Shu shrugs apologetically. “The first ring or the Altered Cultivation Division probably know a lot more, but…”

“But we can’t trust them,” Raika finishes for her. “Maybe we can reach out to Maen, see if she can send us any info, or Taurus through her. He knows we’re still alive, at least.”

“But he’ll need something in return the minute he knows what condition we’re in,” Li Shu says. “And he’ll likely figure out at least some of what you need, and be able to use it against us when the time comes.”

The statement is heavy, but Raika can’t help but feel just a bit lighter at hearing Li Shu say “us”. She nods, then does a long, slow exhale.

“Yeah. Chances are he either has some other hidden trigger to drag me back when his plan starts, or he’s using the fact that I’m out here to add something to his plan already. He may have underestimated how badly I was changing under his control, but he’s the type to have plans within plans.”

Li Shu sends a small wave of Qi towards Raika, letting the feeling of soft yet precise care waft over her for a moment. Raika gives her a smile and nods.

“I’m alright.”

“Good. Anyways, my answer to your question is that we just don’t know what doing the ritual of sacrifice will do to you. Maybe it’ll give you the ability to wield Qi again, maybe it’ll be useless without that ability in the first place. Your soul can’t touch your body, or vice versa, without soul organs- the ritual might just sever a part of you from your very self forever.”

For about a minute or so, the only sound in the valley is the distant groaning of bruised bodies and the rustling of far-off bamboo. Li Shu checks a few notes, double checks her medical supplies, and Raika stands still, feeling the sunlight, the wind in the grass, and just drawing in her sense of the world around her.

“What if… what if there’s a way around the soul organs?”

Li Shu raises an eyebrow.

“Hear me out. The sacrifice ritual doesn’t entirely remove the connection to what’s sacrificed, it just severs it from who you are. Your whole. The Witch had no hair and no eyes- but she still had hair and eyes. That’s the trick, that’s the lie of it all. The sacrifice severs something from your self, but not from your domain, your… your concept. It gives you control over that part of your concept by removing where it connects to you directly.

“What if I use the sacrifice ritual on my soul?”

Li Shu looks at her.

She looks back.

Li Shu looks at her harder.

She looks back.

“So there’s nearly the entire first book here,” she says, raising the mentioned volume, “literally just full of bad ideas you shouldn’t do for a sacrifice ritual. The heart, for example, or the brain, or blood, or like, thought. Maybe a Witch doing her third sacrifice ritual, at the height of her power, could do something like that, but it’s effectively the first part of a Witch’s training to learn what not to do. Because it’ll kill you. I feel like the soul ranks about a dozen steps higher than a heart.”

“But I don’t need a heart,” Raika says. “I might not even need a brain, not really, and I have some to spare now. Or at least I will, when they’re done growing. And like I said, I already don’t have access to my soul. This might separate it from my self, but I would still be able to feel through and use the concept of it, right?”

“But it might need Qi to touch on the concept sacrificed! We don’t know!” Li Shu sighs. “I’m not sure if I’m a bad influence on you, or if you’re a worse influence on me. How come every time you get a new idea, we have to invent some new science to figure out if it’ll kill you or turn into an evil curse or something?”

Raika shrugs. “I’m built different.”

By this point, Qen Hou and Hao Nera are almost back, both leaning on each other for support, though, adorably, it looks like Qen Hou is practically carrying his boyfriend along. They finally limp their way back into the training circle, immediately collapsing onto the dirt floor.

“Ok,” Qen Hou says, “I think we’re done for the day. Training over.”

Raika shakes her head. “Nah, none of that. The two of you are going to be running a bandit clan of thieves! In the midst of Imperial territory! You’ve got to learn to fight better if you’re going to survive.”

“You don’t even know any martial arts!” Qen Hou sputters. “You just-”

“Move incredibly fast and with minimal wasted movements,” she says with a smile. “I may not know more than a basic fighting style, but when you can feel every muscle, you can feel where things can be improved for efficiency and force. Besides, it’s not like spirit beasts know martial arts, and they can still kill you just fine.”

Qen Hou just groans. Hao Nera, for his part, might be drooling on the floor.

“Come on, this is as good for me as it is for you! You learn how not to lose so badly, I get to make up a martial art. I’m thinking of calling it “Monstrous Violence Style”.”

Li Shu sighs. “Raika, I really think you should focus on learning arrays and formations, not fighting or the Craft. You’re already a strong fighter, and if you can master shaping your body into formations like you did your bloodflow-”

She waves her hand. “Yeah, that’s on the list, but we’ve only got so many days. I’m going to be traveling with you for a while, hopefully, but I’m only going to be able to beat the shit out of these two for a few more weeks. I have to focus on what we can do now, not what will take months of learning to be able to use at all.

“Keep watching, kid. Try to learn something. As for you two-”

She strolls over and picks up her friends, depositing them roughly back on their feet. Through synesthesia, that touch alone highlights their bodies with color, making her see red and orange on their most vulnerable or damaged parts, making her smell and taste how tenderized and bruised they both are. Only a few broken bones so far, most of them just fractures, and she can see the outline of strained bloodflow and Qi rushing to everywhere they’re most injured.

“You took almost ten minutes to drag your asses back here, so for the next ten minutes, you don’t get to attack. Focus on your defenses. Then, after that, we can have lunch. I made stew!”